Want to see what it's like to build your own homemade fuel injection? This blog is dedicated to do it yourself car mods, especially a Megasquirt installation in my 1966 Dodge Dart. You'll also find information about tools, racing, and various mad scientist projects.

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

The long overdue fake hydrogen booster theories

A while ago, I blogged about hydrogen booster theories, creating a list of all the claims I've seen put forward by proponents of hydrogen boosters - then adding three claims I've made up out of whole cloth, and challenging readers to guess which ones I'd made up. I can't think of a sound theoretical reason why using the car's electrical system to power a hydrogen generator and feeding the resulting gas into the car's intake should improve mileage. But proponents have no shortage of unsound theories. From the reactions I had from readers, it seems it's pretty hard to distinguish their theories from patent nonsense. Here's the fake theories.

"6. The hydrogen and oxygen react with decane in the fuel, causing it to split into ethanol and iso-octane."

This was an effort to think like a scammer, making up a claim that tied into real research on flex-fuel cars (in truth, ethanol tends to hurt gas mileage). You can write a balanced chemical reaction based on that line. But I can't think of a good reason why this reaction would actually happen.

"3. The flow rate should be proportional to the engine size and RPM. To find the best flow rate in liters per minute, take the engine size, multiply by the RPM, and divide by 2."

For some reason, hydrogen generator proponents seldom try to size the generator to the engine. This line would also result in a far larger hydrogen generator than any I've seen tried on a car. On the other hand, if you feed an engine that much hydrogen, it'll definitely get some sort of results...

"8. Because hydrogen causes the air / fuel mixture to implode, the engine needs very different valve timing. The cam should be replaced by one with a much longer intake opening and a far shorter exhaust opening, and overlap absolutely must be cut to zero."

Believe it or not, I didn't make up the implosion theories. These theories also seem to be tied to orgone, although trying to figure out what orgone even is can give you a headache in a hurry. However, I haven't seen anyone try to make internal modifications to the engine to get better results with the hydrogen generator. Logically, changes to the fuel should call for changes in things like cam timing or compression ratio, but you don't see anyone trying it.